A project proposal on e-shopping with affiliation

A
Project Proposal
On
E-shopping with affiliation


Submitted By
Jayman Tamang
Rupak Nepali



Submitted to
Nobel College
Faculty of management
Pokhara University


July 2010

 
Table of contents
Chapter 1
1. Introduction to e-shopping
2. History of e-shopping
3. Historical Timeline of e-shopping
4. Objectives of e-shopping
5. Current e-shopping sites in Nepal

Chapter 2
1. Purpose of project
2. Scope of the project
3. Phases of Development of project
3.1 Problem definition: pay by customer for product , advertisement,
3.2 Feasibility study
3.3 Project Analysis
3.4 Project design
3.5 Project Coding and testing
Chapter 3
1. Tools and techniques that are required
2. Threats and Risks

Bibliography


 
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION

Electronic Commerce or e-commerce is business transactions that take place by communication networks. It is a process of buying and selling products, services, and information over computer network. E-commerce is a set of dynamic technologies, applications and business process that link organizations, customers, suppliers and communities through electronic transactions and the electronic exchange of information products and services
Electronic commerce that is conducted between businesses and consumers, on the other hand, is referred to as business-to-consumer or B2C. This is the type of electronic commerce conducted by companies such as Amazon.com.
Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce where the buyer is directly online to the seller's computer usually via the internet. There is no intermediary service. The sale and purchase transaction is completed electronically and interactively in real-time such as Amazon.com for new books. If an intermediary is present, then the sale and purchase transaction is called electronic commerce such as eBay.com.
History of e-shopping
Originally, electronic commerce meant the facilitation of commercial transactions electronically, using technology such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). These were both introduced in the late 1970s, allowing businesses to send commercial documents like purchase orders or invoices electronically.
Online shopping, a form of electronic commerce, In 1979 Michael Aldrich, an English inventor, connected a modified 26" color domestic television to a real-time transaction processing computer via a domestic telephone line and invented online shopping. The first recorded B2B was Thomson Holidays 1981 the first recorded B2C was Gateshead SIS/Tesco in 1984. The world's first recorded online home shopper was Mrs. Jane Snowball, 72, of Gateshead, England in May 1984. During the 1980s Aldrich sold many systems mainly in the UK including Ford, Peugeot, General Motors and Nissan. The Nissan system of 1984/5 was revolutionary. It enabled a car buyer on a dealer's lot to both buy and finance the car, including credit check, online. Aldrich invented both the online shopping system and the business rationale for using it. His 1980s systems were as fast as 2010 internet shopping systems. They used dial-up and leased telephone lines as broadband was not available
From the 1990s onwards, electronic commerce would additionally include enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), data mining and data warehousing.
An early example of many-to-many electronic commerce in physical goods was the Boston Computer Exchange, a marketplace for used computers launched in 1982. An early online information marketplace, including online consulting, was the American Information Exchange, another pre Internet online system introduced in 1991.
The Internet became popular worldwide around 1994 when the first internet online shopping started; it took about five years to introduce security protocols and DSL allowing continual connection to the Internet. By the end of 2000, many European and American business companies offered their services through the World Wide Web. Since then people began to associate a word "ecommerce" with the ability of purchasing various goods through the Internet using secure protocols and electronic payment services.
Historical Timeline
• 1979: Michael Aldrich invented online shopping
• 1981: Thomson Holidays, UK is first B2B online shopping
• 1985: Nissan UK sells cars and finance with credit checking to customers online from dealers' lots.
• Pizza Hut offers online ordering on its Web page in 1992
• 1995: Jeff Bezos launches Amazon.com
• 2010: US e-Commerce and Online Retail sales projected to reach $173 billion, an increase of 7 percent over 2009
Objectives of e-shopping

The main objectives of the e-shopping are given below: -
1. To provide information about various products in different category.
2. Customer can purchase Products Online.
3. Customer can login and get various information about products and can purchase the suitable product with price and quality comparison.
4. Customer can pay online, so security is must therefore e-shopping provide secure transactions.
5. After sale e-shopping also provide after sales service in which customer problem is solved.
6. Data security is maintained to relatively high level by implementing it at Database level, so as to ensure that only authorized users have access to confidential client information

Current e-shopping sites in Nepal
The current e-shopping sites of Nepal are
 Kathmandu Mart.com : This site will deliver state-of-the-art Online Solutions by bringing technology and people together to resolve a wide range of shopping necessity.
 NetForNepal.com : A site through which you can send gifts to your family & friends in Nepal.
 Nepa Rudraksha: Nepa Rudraksha is founded to achieve objectives of promoting Nepali rudraksha and saligrams.
 Pashminarus.com: For the finest collection of the highest quality pashmina shawls from Nepal.
 Thamel.com: For all kinds of occasions, send gifts to Nepal
 Muncha House - An e-commerce site to send gifts to loved ones in Nepal 
Chapter 2
Purpose of project

We cover a wide variety of topics which are
• Build a product catalog that can be browsed and searched
• Implement the catalog administration pages that allow adding, modifying, and removing products, categories, and departments, and other administrative features
• Create your own shopping basket and check-out mechanism in PHP
• Increase sales by implementing product recommendations and product reviews
• Handle payments using PayPal and other electronic payment.
• Implement a customer accounts system
• Integrate Amazon.com web services to sell Amazon.com items through our web site.

While implementing these features, we’ll learn how to
• Design relational databases and write MySQL queries and stored procedures.
• Use the MySQL full-text search feature to implement product searching.
• Use the Smarty templating engine to write structured and extensible PHP code.
• Implement search engine optimization features
• Use AJAX to improve the users’ experience utilizing your web site
• Integrate external web services
 



Scope of the project
1. Increasing the value of the content with accessibility, reusability and durability.
2. We will develop the necessary skills to get our business up on the Web and available to a worldwide audience.
3. We’ll understand the concepts, and we’ll have the knowledge.
4. Affiliation program helps to generated many visitors and is one of the best marketing strategies.

Phases of Development of project
1. Problem definition: pay by customer for product , advertisement,
2. Feasibility study
3. Project analysis
4. Project design
5. Project coding and testing
Problem definition
Viewing the latest e-commerce sites implemented in Nepal there does not contain the product reviews, marketing for the products and the sites as well as search engine optimization which ultimately drive visitors to the site and increase the chances that visitors will buy from same site and not from the competitor.

The sites are also not implementing latest technology as durpal, magento, jquery and ajax and are not user friendly.

The sites are also not maintaining CRM (customer relationship management) for their future reference





Feasibility study
With the problems addressed above we are making the e-shopping site removing the problems and the technological feasibility of this project is that we are using known technologies as well as open source codes like the PHP and MySQL and the operational feasibility is that we can be able to do as per the business requirement, and the economic feasibility is that we are preparing the project as per the partial fulfillment of the BCIS so the economic feasibility is fulfilled.

Project analysis
In this stage we gather the information from the different sources for project development. The methods of collecting information are
1. Interviewing
2. Observations
3. Viewing of documents and manuals from different e-commerce sites

Project design
In this phase we design the output of project and its format, inputs and procedures etc. In this stage we design
1. PayPal implementation(transactions through PayPal)
2. Product creation and recommendations
3. Product attributes
4. Creating own shopping cart
5. Implementing Ajax features
6. Searching the catalog and catalog administration
7. Search engine optimization
8. Advertisement with affiliation and other media
Project Coding and Testing
In this stage we convert the system design to final project using programming language. In this stage format error and logic error are eliminated and make complete project without any error.
After completion of coding, the project will be tested to find out that all individual programs perform correctly. The implementation of PayPal, affiliation program and other services are perform correctly or not is tested.



Date July August September
Phase Week
1 Week
2 Week
3 Week
4 Week
1 Week
2 Week
3 Week 4 Week
1 Week
2 Week
3
Feasibility study
Project analysis
Project Design

Project coding and Testing
Documentation

Gantt chart for project

 
Chapter 3

Tools and techniques those are required

Tools and techniques Name
Text editor Macromedia Dreamweaver
Flash generator Dreamweaver Flash
Programming languages PHP, Mysql, Javascript, Facebook MarkUp Language, Paypal Code, Jquery, Ajax, Smarty tempalting, HTML, XML, DHML, Style Sheets (CSS)
Guidance Oscommerce, Durpal, Magento and other e-commerce sites
Web Server Apache

What are the requirements that we need?
• Affiliation program creation
• Basic knowledge about SEO and other marketing strategies such as facebook application
• How Paypal Transactions works or the implementation of sandbox.
• Knowledge about the JavaScript, Ajax, Jquery and flash.
• Embedded code generation
• Knowledge about the osCommerce, durpal, magento and other e-commerce sites.

Why to go online?
• Get more customers
• Recognize worldwide
• Reduce the costs of fulfilling demands or orders.
• Increasing Business revenue
• Increasing the operational value
• Increase flexibility


Will the site generate revenue?

Of course there are so many ways to generate revenue and draw customers to E-shopping sites. Most commonly uses are:
a) Google Adsense
b) Referral Programs
c) Local Advertisements
d) Newspaper and Media
e) Customer Relation Management.


What’s new in our project?

Basically, e-shopping is new concept and many project have already been made and is emerging in new eras and covers many techniques.
In our project E-shopping with affiliation program the product in our site can be advertise to the other sites and the affiliated account holder can earn money.
The strategy can be PPC (Pay Per Click) means the affiliated account holder can earn money as per the clicks in our product.


Make money with affiliate program that pays the account holder for every click
Affiliated account holder gets paid for every visitor that clicks on an advertisement. Our goal is to enable you to make as much as possible from your advertising space, by letting advertisers bid on your ad space. We pay monthly, either by check, or instantly through PayPal with a minimum of only $50. They can also promote our site with the banners available and other promotional texts and click providers.




Risks and Threats

All this might make it sound as if your e-commerce business can’t possibly fail. Some risks are particularly relevant to e-commerce companies, such as
• Hacking
• Credit card scams
• Hardware failures
• Unreliable shipping services
• Software errors
• Changing laws

Bibliography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_commerce
http://www.ecommerce-blog.org
http://www.phpwebcommerce.com/
https://developer.paypal.com/
http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/2007/Affiliate_Marketing.asp
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/E/electronic_commerce.html
http://www.amazon.com